Below are two versions of a presentation I gave at the AIAA SciTech 2015, the largest aerospace conference in the world. The first is a bit shorter (5 min) and was delivered at the internal CDT conference at the University of Bristol. The second is slightly longer (10 min) and was delivered to a number of senior Airbus structural engineers showcasing exciting engineering research with possible applications for lightweight wing design.

The talks feature some of my research on minimising the mass of aircraft wing panels by taking advantage of a novel manufacturing technology for fibre-reinforced composites (e.g. carbon fibre or glass fibre) called fibre steering. This manufacturing technique allows individual fibres to be steered such that both classic straight-fibre and advanced curved fibre composite layers can be manufactured.

In typical straight-fibre laminates the structural engineer only has the freedom to tailor the stiffness of the composite laminate in the thickness direction, i.e. stacking multiple layers of different orientations on top of each other.

In tow-steered laminates the curvilinear nature of the fibre means that the stiffness of the laminate can also be tailored within the plane, i.e. in the length and width directions of the laminate. This feature drastically increases the available design space and gives engineers more freedom to find the optimal solution to heavily constrained design specifications. Furthermore, the technology creates the opportunity for replicating the blended structures seen in nature by facilitating smooth transitions between areas with different structural requirements.